Evaluating the Use of Residential Mailing Addresses in a Metropolitan Household Survey

On-site enumeration is generally regarded as the most comprehensivemethod for developing sampling frames for area household surveys.However, the time and expense associated with on-site enumerationoften precludes it from being a viable option for many householdsurveys. Residential mailing lists provide an alternative thatenables in-person surveys to be done cheaper and faster thanis possible with on-site enumeration. The primary drawback ofmailing lists is that the completeness of the lists is unknown.In this article, we evaluate the coverage of mailing addressesthat were used as a sampling frame for a probability-based surveyof 15,000 households in Dallas County, TX. The addresses wereobtained from the Delivery Sequence File (DSF) offered by theU.S. Postal Service (USPS) through a nonexclusive license agreementwith private companies. The DSF is a computerized file thatcontains all delivery point addresses serviced by the USPS,with the exception of general delivery. To evaluate the coverageof the mailing addresses, we used Kish's Half-Open Interval(HOI) procedure to search for missed housing units in the intervalbetween the selected address and the next address in deliverysequence order. A total of 46 missed addresses (1.9 percent)were found among the 2,380 HOIs randomly selected for examination.In addition, we discovered that the vast majority of personswho maintained a residential P.O. box also have mail deliveredto their street address. Finally, the mailing addresses yieldeda 90 percent occupancy rate, which is consistent with metropolitanhousehold surveys that use on-site enumeration methods.     

Ethical Room for Maneuver: Playground for the Food Business

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness.     

Migrant family visits and the life course: interrelationships between age,capacity and desire

Migrant visits to the country of origin play a crucial role in transnational family cohesion and migrant well‐being; the research on them so far has focused primarily on the relationship between migrant integration and transnational engagement. In this article, I extend the discussion by adding a life course perspective to Carling and Hoelscher's (2013) framework for studying transnational activities, which incorporates capacity and desire. I explore whether age has an independent effect on migrants' family visits and how it relates to socio‐economic resources, migration status and transnational ties. Using data from a survey of Peruvian migrants around the globe (n=7,741), I show that migrants' stage in the life course has a partial effect on their propensity to travel through the interrelationship between age, capacity and desire. The findings show that the capacity and desire of migrants to visit their country of origin are particularly strong after reaching retirement age, suggesting a favourable combination of resources at later stages in life. However, whether this expresses a positive approach to ageing, or is a strategy to balance transnational family obligations and to postpone return decisions, remains open for future research.     

Pitirim A. Sorokin's Integralism and Public Sociology

Major features of the thought of Pitirim A. Sorokin are related to Michael Burawoy's four forms of sociology. The article develops the theme that Sorokin's system of sociology makes major contributions to identifying standards of excellence for professional, critical, policy, and public sociology and for their interrelationships. Sorokin's integral ontology and epistemology are described and identified as sources of the distinctive characteristics of his system of thought.     

Public definitions of crime problems and functionalist processes: a reassessment

La théorie fonctionnaliste permet deux interprétations de ?impact de la criminalité sur ?ordre social. Cet article tentera de les réconcilier. La première interprétation, basée sur les travaux de Durkheim et de Mead, prête un caractère fonctionnel à cet impact. Des travaux plus récents, par contre, mettent ?accent sur la désunion qui résulte de la criminalité. J'utilise ici les données du Vancouver Urban Survey pour analyser pour quels publics sont valables des définitons de crime en tant que problème personnel ou problème public. J'analyse done diverses réponses à la criminalité, qui la définissent alternativement en termes privés ou publics, et je suggère que chaque définition peut être valable pour des segments de la population différentiés. De tels résultats appellent la remise en quesiton des postulats fondamentaux sur lesquels les approches fonctionnalistes reposent. Functionalist theory has provided two distinct interpretations of the implications which crime has for patterns of social order. The first which is derived from the writings of Durkheim and Mead emphasizes the functional character of these implications while more recent viewpoints have stressed their divisive nature. An attempt is made to reconcile these positions through an examination of coping strategies that suggest definitions of crime as a private trouble and as a public issue. Employing data from the Vancouver Urban Survey, the interrelationship between these dimensions is examined and an attempt is made to describe the publics for whom particular definitions of the crime problem are salient. The analysis suggests that both definitions may be correct but for different segments of the population. This resolution, it is argued, may require a reconsideration of the basic assumptions upon which functionalist approaches are predicated.